Municipal and other public transit agencies typically accept both electronic and hard currency transactions. Hard currency collection systems remain in use, in part due to national rules governing transit operations. These regulations are imposed as a condition for receiving federal transportation funds, and govern not only how revenue is collected but also how hard currency is stored and handled after collection. Bills and coins are typically transferred into secure vaults and later moved to banking facilities. The vaults' specifications mandate particular designs and construction materials, making them very difficult to tamper with or break into but also very heavy.
Mobile vaults having wheels have been developed allowing allow workers to move them without the assistance of heavy machinery such as forklifts, etc. Mobile vaults typically have a front set of wheels mounted on a static fork, and a rear set of wheels on a swiveling fork. Handles at the rear of the mobile vault above the rear wheels allow operators to steer and maneuver the vaults around tight corners and into confined spaces despite their heavy weight, particularly when filled with coinage. Although movement is made easier, mobile vaults suffer from the drawback that once in motion, inertia makes it difficult to slow down or bring them to a stop. They are also prone to unexpectedly move on any remotely slanted surface, while traveling aboard a moving vehicle, or when otherwise urged by gravity into motion.
The difficulty in slowing down and stopping mobile vaults can result in damage to objects and obstacles caught in the path of a moving mobile vault, injury to persons struck by a moving mobile vault, and occasionally damage or destruction of the vault itself, for instance if allowed to roll off a loading dock, or otherwise fall from even a very low height. Currently there is no method of controlling or hindering the motion of mobile currency vaults other than bringing force to bear on the handles, which is frequently insufficient to avoid the aforementioned types of damage and injury.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a motion control system for mobile currency vaults. Another object of the invention is to provide an automatic system designed to default a mobile currency vault to a non-moving configuration. Another object of the invention is to include a system having a deactivation capability, allowing users to set a mobile currency vault to a default stopped, or default moving configuration. Yet another object of the invention is to provide a motion control system built to tolerances satisfying federal specification requirements for mobile currency vaults. These and other objects of the invention are more fully explained in the following summary, description and claims.